Chapter 85: Collecting Weapons

As for Bai Lang's reward? To him, money was still more important; he wasn't particularly interested in continuing to get promoted, and right now studying martial arts here was the proper course. Especially now that he held this office, he could also borrow many books collected in the inner palace. The imperial palace inner court still had plenty of martial arts secret manuals, so Bai Lang had Eunuch Cao help him by copying a bunch of manuals for him to study.

Technique manuals were easy enough—just diagrams breaking down the motions; practicing them would let one learn some moves. But internal energy manuals or advanced fist and palm manuals were troublesome, filled with jargon; using Daoist terminology was already considered popularized, and the vast majority of manuals relied heavily on metaphor. Moreover, in Bai Lang's view, many of the obscure points required a master's personal guidance.

"This should be the case... given the current world's thinking and vision, this is normal." Bai Lang sighed, and with his ability he naturally couldn't decipher these metaphors, and besides, internal energy couldn't be practiced haphazardly. External martial arts were much the same—likewise needing a master to get started, though the threshold was lower. Given Bai Lang's current martial skill, such a master was no longer necessary.

However, these martial arts weren't really suited to Bai Lang's path; the manuals collected in the inner palace were mostly minor techniques, basically akin to radio calisthenics in his view—just for exercising the body. As for combat? They were less useful than Qi Nan Tang's newly written Record of Effect, and certainly less useful than Yu Xu Jiang's Sword Classic—those few books were the true textbooks of combat technique.

Still, one could always find gold in the sand, and Bai Lang eventually found a few manuals that seemed problem-free—yet, "Can't practice?" Bai Lang was also greatly surprised; he tried, but couldn't circulate his qi, or rather, once he began moving true qi along the manual's route, it immediately triggered the Golden Bell Shield's power, which then forcibly shattered and destroyed that true qi.

Bai Lang also felt that this strand of true qi was unlike his internal force—how to put it? It was like water and oil, immiscible except for the shared point of circulating through the meridians; otherwise they were completely different. "In other words, I actually can't practice this world's martial arts? Then why did that Yu Yu bring this old man here?" Bai Lang was baffled. Yet this didn't stop him from continuing his research.

"Oh my, half a month has passed; time to make a trip and see if the weapons have been sent back." Bai Lang slapped his forehead, immediately deciding to set out—this time no one would stop him, nor did he need a guide; he alone led one horse and rode another, and this time he was even more straightforward, taking neither armor nor weapons.

"This actually makes escape easier; anyway, once we get there, weapons are everywhere, so we can just kill people and seize their arms." Bai Lang rode his horse nonchalantly, gradually approaching Brocade Prefecture City. Outside the city there were no patrols, because for the past half month Bai Lang had repeatedly gone out hunting as a pretext, slaughtering any cavalry that left Brocade Prefecture City to scout the Peaceful Distance area; after losing dozens of men, the Qing troops simply stopped sending patrols.

This time, upon arriving at Brocade Prefecture City and looking into the distance, Bai Lang saw the city on high alert—he had seen the cannon covers removed and the gates shut. "Good thing there are no bed crossbows, otherwise they'd probably have been brought out." Bai Lang chuckled, then dismounted a hundred paces outside the city wall and shouted loudly, "Sir, have my weapons been sent yet?"

The top answered the question directly with a cannon.

The cannon boomed, but it missed; adjusting the azimuth of these cannons wasn't easy, and their trajectories weren't very accurate either, so hitting Bai Lang was completely impossible. The cannons' blind spots were also large, Bai Lang quickly closed in on the city wall, and as he ran along it, the rolling logs and hurled stones above couldn't hit him. Bai Lang wasn't stupid—he would change direction when needed. Anyway, the battlements were lively, and Bai Lang truly couldn't find a chance to rush up.

The gate tower was out of the question—who knew what lay behind that gate? Bai Lang, with his enduring stamina, could at worst run a lap around Brocade Prefecture City and surely find a way up. Put another way, if he came here every day to loop around, the Qing garrison stationed here wouldn't last a month. Bai Lang still found a defensive weak point, and he was up on the wall in just a few moves. The Qing troops before him scattered in all directions—laughable, since everyone had heard what sort of havoc this monster had wrought the last time it came.

Blades and spears couldn't pierce him, he was like a ferocious tiger—these were just rumors, but many had seen the corpses of the elite infantry on the city tower—one person could wipe them out in less than the time it takes to finish a cup of tea, so surrounding and killing him in the city was pointless, since they couldn't hem him in. Thus, when that monster leapt onto the tower, the battle had already become a one-sided slaughter; people couldn't kill demons, so as mortals they'd better flee quickly.

On the tower, Bai Lang roamed as freely as a tiger patrolling the mountains; he hadn't even taken a head yet—but that didn't matter, as he could simply grab a few on the way out. With three horses and a net bag, he could easily carry twenty-odd heads. Just as he was wandering about, preparing to find someone to ask about the weapons' whereabouts, the men who had come specially to deal with him also arrived.

"Hey! At this point he's already teamed up with lamas? And Han traitors?" Bai Lang exclaimed as the ten-odd men who had rapidly closed in and surrounded him came into view. Among them were six lamas wearing rooster-comb hats, plus a couple in Qing imperial guard uniforms wielding iron halberds and a one-legged copper figure, and even a scholar-dressed man who had shaved his head into a money-rat tail—a Han collaborator. In short, they had Bai Lang surrounded.

Bai Lang, however, wore the usual general's yesa robe, red with a tiger insignia on the cloth, and a cap on his head—quite the imposing figure. He smiled, glanced left and right, and said, "You lot are the Tatar elite, come today to surround my household, eh? Well then, let's see what the Tatar elite are made of!" Bai Lang simply stood there, waiting for them to rush up and meet their doom.

They indeed came up and met their doom; the lamas held demon-subduing pestles and great hand seals, and the six lamas could actually transfer power to each other, even having a coordinated formation. As for the two Tatars wielding iron halberds and the one-legged copper figure, the weight of their weapons even exceeded that of Bai Lang's two water-polished purple gold halberds; as for the few Han-dressed men who had shaved their heads into money-rat tails, they were versed in sword, spear, and palm techniques, and in Bai Lang's view they were also quite capable.

They appeared to have drilled beforehand, employing a non-interfering, even mutually covering fighting style, and in an instant they had Bai Lang trapped in the center.